OH has it right!
I personally have no issue with hue paints.
I like the ones I have and the colors are nice and rich.

The conventional wisdom is that the multitude of pigments in a hue makes for muddy mixes. To my knowledge there is no data to support this claim. People just repeat it.

What is in acrylics labeled ” hue”? I’ve seen some threads saying to avoid these paints like the plague, so why do they seem to get a bad rap?

There’s a huge amount of passion amongst painters about what to avoid, that’s for sure! Sometimes it cleaves along student grade paints versus professional grade. A lot more filler in the student paints, a lot less colour “pop”. But even that’s a generalization, cause there’s sometimes a very affordable and functional student paint to use that’s okay.

As for the hue word on the label, if it’s a professional grade paint series from a prominent manufacturer, it’s okay to use. I’ve used both the original and the “hue” and while they hit the hue note – the colour – they don’t hit the character of the original paint – the physicality of the original paint. Nothing can, really.

Almost all modern paint pigments in our paint tubes are synthetic – just to let you know. They are an industrial chemical fabricated version of the real world material from which pigments use to be derived en mass (still are by niche – and very expensive markets). The chemical structure is almost identical. So, our pigments in our paints are in one of two broad categories:

Synthetic Organic

and

Synthetic Mineral

Organic here means derived from petroleum products. This is the summary based on industrial chemistry – the producers of our paint pigments.

Synthetic Organic is also often just called “Modern”, and Synthetic Mineral is often just called “Mineral”.

Modern examples : Phthalo, Quinacridone, Azo
Synthetic Mineral examples: ” Ultramarine (thank goodness, cause the real stuff is as valuable as gold), Cobalt.

Modern – small pigment size, consistent small size – loads into a lot of binder – hence very glossy, transparent, and also very high tinting strength – a little goes a long way. Tinting curve from tube colour to thin film tint can be quite a long, and interesting journey – shifting from red masking the support to violet-red as a thin tint for Magenta, and a violet-y blue to a more greenish blue with a Phthalo Blue for example.

“Mineral” (still synthetic though) – larger pigment particles with a larger size range, loads easily by comparison into binder – lower tinting strength (a little does not go a long way in comparison) – by comparison tends to be less transparent – more opaque. Mixing – tinting curve is straight forward, staying reasonable close to the tube colour (Ultramarine is the only significant exception to this, a unique character in its own right).

Single pigment labels on a paint tube versus multiple pigments on a label – still okay. After all, we mix up colours from multiple tubes. When multiple pigments are listed on a tube labelled as a “Hue”, it can be an affordable alternative – especially when a lot of mixing is done; a substitute for an old favourite no longer available from industry; or an alternative to something like Cadmiums – yes often listed as toxic – but also very,very expensive.

Just an example, but all the industrial synthetic pigment paints in common use for over a century have a low tinting strength. So, the newer synthetic organics got a terribly bad rap in books, by painters, by instructors “don’t use these” they cried en mass in the early decades up to toady since their inception in the market. That’s largely because of the vastly different and much stronger tinting strength and the much higher transparency. It made such a mess when used just like the relatively more opaque and lower tinting “minerals”. Just goes to show, test – test – test – with a delicate mixing hand first to see the character of the paint coming out of the tube.

Just my 2 cents, based on exploring and testing all these paints (I have real alizarin, madder, cadmiums, and manganese, as well as their substitutes. Very interesting journey. I’ve also learned that great artists with the original pigment paints in the past (say, circa 1880) don’t match the original pigment paints that were available up to a few decades ago. Things were always changing in one way or another.

Great essay, Red. I would add that the more transparent pigments can create luminous and volumetric effects because the light pears through them and reflects back from the background.

Holbein makes a water soluble oil that is labeled Cadmium Red Hue. It is a wonderful color but not Cadmium Red. It is both cooler and less opaque. It is actually Pyrrole Red. It does not act in mixtures like Cadmium Red.

Golden makes a Hansa Yellow Opaque. Again a wonderful color that I really like to use. I am so glad that they called it by its name rather than Cadmium Yellow Hue.

Blick’s Acrylic Cobalt Blue Hue is Phthalo Blue, Ultra Blue and T. White. I like that mixture myself for skies, probably more than Cobalt Blue. I would just prefer more honest labeling. It might save me from buying a tube that I can mix myself.

If you move from one manufacturer to another, a given Hue color might be a mixture of different pigments. It is hard to know without research. And even if a Hue looks about the same out of the tube, you can not be sure how it will act when you mix it with other colors if it is different pigments.

I do not mind hues, I would prefer full accurate labeling.

OH has it right!
I personally have no issue with hue paints.
I like the ones I have and the colors are nice and rich.

The only problems you might have with hues is when combining with another color the result might be different from what you would get with a non hue, so you might need to adapt a little your “formulas” or color.